Intro: Do you feel like you were meant to have a kick-ass career as a hair stylist? Like you got into this industry to make big things happen?
Maybe you’re struggling to build a solid base and want some stability. Maybe you know social media is important, but it feels like a waste of time because you aren’t seeing any results. Maybe you’ve already had some amazing success but are craving more. Maybe you’re ready to truly enjoy the freedom and flexibility this industry has to offer.
Cutting and coloring skills will only get you so far, but to build a lifelong career as a wealthy stylist, it takes business skills and a serious marketing strategy. When you’re ready to quit just working in your business and start working on it, join us here where we share real success stories from real stylists.
I’m Britt Seva, social media and marketing strategist just for hair stylists, and this is the Thriving Stylist Podcast.
Britt Seva: What is up and welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast. I’m your host, Britt Seva and I’ll be the first to admit I’m feeling a little bit vulnerable to diving into this topic today, talking about vulnerability. I will be the very first to say that I really struggled with vulnerability for a long time. I probably still do, not just professionally, but personally in all the ways. Through a lot of deep work and a good amount of therapy and a lot of education and coaching and by the grace of my incredible husband, who’s really patient with me and really takes the time to help me see more of myself and encourages me to push and grow and feel safe and trust in all the things, I’ve really learned to be more vulnerable.
In doing so, both personally and professionally, my gosh, has my life gotten better, and I want to talk about what it looks like to be authentic, what it looks like to be vulnerable, and what it looks like to do both in a way that is profitable.
As I say that, I want to be super clear. I don’t mean manipulative vulnerability because if that’s what it was, then you wouldn’t be being authentic and I don’t like that.
We saw there was a big name educator—I refer to this person as Voldemort. They-who-should-not-be-named because I don’t like to talk negatively about anybody, to be candid. And so I prefer to stay anonymous, but there was this person who really was showing up, I would say very vulnerably, like would share the good, the bad, the ugly of business, of life, of literally everything. We felt like we knew this person if you followed this person. But it came out in the last 18 months that that person was not being authentic. They were being vulnerable and they were certainly profitable, but the authenticity was missing.
That’s not what I’m coaching to. I don’t like that. That person lost literally everything that they had, including their family and lots of things. I definitely don’t want that. I’m not speaking to that, but that is the potential, very extreme repercussion of being vulnerable and profitable, but not authentic.
Now there’s another side of that where you can be authentic and vulnerable, but overly transparent or unapproachable in a way that makes you not profitable. And so the reason that profit even enters this conversation is because I coach small business owners. If I just coached bloggers, or if I did a podcast that was just about finding true joy and happiness, then I wouldn’t include profitability in the conversation.
If this podcast were not business-focused and I was just talking about how being an authentic, vulnerable, transparent human has helped me as a mother and a wife, that’s fine, but that would be a completely different conversation. I host a small business podcast and so the idea of profitability is critical and the reason I’m looping that in is I do watch some people what I think is set themselves up to lose footing in their business for the sake of being authentic. And I think that there’s a balance between all of it.
I want to dive into that today, but you can see I’m treading on some thin ice. That’s why I’m feeling a little vulnerable, but I think that this is too important for me to skip it and in the effort to be authentic and vulnerable, I decided about two years ago, I wasn’t going to stray away from talking about topics that might feel dangerous or that might put me into some hot water because of the reason that I believe true vulnerability and true authenticity can be executed by those who are willing to enter the conversation by those who are willing to speak their truth, but then admit their faults. And if they’re questioned about something, hold the space to say, “Okay, time out. Why do you feel that way? When I say that, where did I misstep?” and go back and learn from it.
I’m going to dive into this and we’ll see where we go. So the first thing I want to talk about is the definition of vulnerability and I’ll be candid. I looked this up when I was heading into a podcast recording with Phorest salon software. I’ve been working with the Phorest team for probably about six months now, on and off, I connected with several members of their team and we’ve done some really fun special projects together.
I recently got a chance to connect with Zoe from their team on the Phorest FM podcast, and they reached out to me and said, “Can we talk about something a little bit deeper than what you’d normally do on your show?” And I was like, “Yeah, let’s go there,” and I talked about my fears around vulnerability and being authentic. Most of y’all know this, I don’t share my children’s names on social media. I don’t post a lot of photos of me and my husband. It’s not because I don’t love them and care about them. It’s because that’s a piece of my life I’ve chosen to hold back on. There’s lots of pieces of my life I’ve chosen to hold back on and Zoe, I reached out and they said, “Can we go there a little bit?” And I said yes.
In doing the research for that podcast, a lot came up for me and I’m sharing some of those tidbits with you today, but I suggest you listen to that show as well ‘cause it was a really fun interview.
When I looked up the definition of vulnerability, it’s the quality or state of being exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed.
Whoa.
When you hear it like that, does that make it a little bit more clear as to why people struggle with being vulnerable? Who in the world wants to be exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed? Attacked or harm can be physically, it can be mentally, it can be emotionally, it can be socially. It can be like all these different ways, right? Spiritually. I mean so many ways.
So when we choose to be vulnerable, we choose the risk of exposure to being attacked or harmed, and you’ll find that the more you speak your truth, the more you will get pushback. This is why I’ve said very openly, if you don’t have haters yet on social media to any degree, it likely is a huge indicator that you are not being fully vulnerable yet, or you’re not being perceived as vulnerable yet. You’re still playing safe to a degree.
I rode that train for a long time and then as I started sharing more about my life experiences, my truth, my true views on things, even if it’s not what everybody else already naturally agrees with. That’s when I got pushback. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. It means you should be brave enough to enter the conversation. However, there is a boundary that goes with it and that’s what I want to talk about because there’s dangerous vulnerability and then there’s healthy vulnerability.
When we see somebody showing up in healthy vulnerability, it’s very appealing because I don’t know about you. I only want to do business today with brands that I value and trust, like when there’s a values alignment, when I like what they’re up to. I like what I know about the face behind the brand. When I feel like there’s a good human at the helm, it makes me feel really differently and if somebody’s not showing up as vulnerable, it’s really tough to tell if that’s there. Like somebody can be funny, but you don’t know who they are. Somebody can be smart, but you don’t know who they are. And that’s why you see a lot of smart, funny people not making a profit because the vulnerability’s just not there.
Healthy vulnerability recognizes when to share and when to be silent.
I want to talk about transparency for a minute. Transparency enters the conversation because that is how much or how little of your truth we show at any given time. When we are overly transparent, it’s the same as being overexposed. It’s too much. And that can make people feel very uncomfortable. It can make you feel unapproachable and it makes other people feel like they cannot enter the conversation with you because you’ve pushed the boundary too far where you are vulnerable.
Yes. You opened yourself up to the possibility of not everybody’s going to like this, and maybe you were even authentic, like this is my truth, but what got you is being overly transparent to the point where you made others who could potentially be a part of the conversation, feel like they couldn’t do the dance with you. They didn’t know where to jump in there. Wasn’t a relatability. It made them question themselves, question you, question if they really knew you. Sometimes we dabble with over transparency to a point where we can actually turn business away unnecessarily. And I want to dive into that and talk about what it looks like to have healthy transparency versus the overshare.
I want to share with you a really great Brené Brown quote, and I’m actually going to quote Brené and I’m going to call her Brené as if we’re best friends, because in my mind we are, and we’re not, but I’ve watched her documentary on Netflix a million times. I’ve read all of her books. I listen to her podcast. If you don’t know Dr. Brené Brown, she’s openly a shame researcher and she researches shame, vulnerability, authenticity. If you’ve not checked her out, I really enjoy her style of teaching and coaching and educating and mentoring.
This is a quote from Brené: “Integrity is choosing courage over comfort. It’s choosing what is right over what is fun, fast, or easy, and choosing to practice our values rather than simply professing them.” Oof. That was on integrity. And she’s also speaking to authenticity and I really like that.
Are you showing up within your values or are you just talking about them? Are you actually doing the things or is it your truth? Are you choosing what’s fun, fast, and easy? Or are you choosing what is structurally correct? Right? I think those are really good questions.
I want to pose four questions to you that’ll help you decide what professional authenticity could look like to you. This is like a filter I want you to run things through. Just try it on, just give it a shot.
What are your business X factors? So when we talk about X factors, this is something I coach to in Thrivers Society. Our values, your values, my values, our values as human beings, right? We all have certain life values that just exist within us. If you meet somebody—my sister is a vegan. I can tell her that eating meat is good for you whether that’s my truth or not. I’m just using this as an example. I can tell her like, “No, you need to be eating meat. It’s super important.” I could say that all I want to, her values don’t align with that statement. She will never believe me because her truth is something different.
When I say, what are your X factors? And I say that values are one third of the X factor formula. You have to deeply know your values and be confident standing in them. Because when she was a baby vegan, when she was first starting off, she could be swayed, right? “Well, maybe I’ll just incorporate some dairy,” or “Maybe, maybe this is not so bad,” and then she got more defined in her beliefs. That happens over time.
As you get to know your values and you get confident in not everybody agreeing with you and that creates the vulnerability. She gets pushed back all the time. But the thing is, she doesn’t care anymore. She is exposed to scrutiny. Even as I say this, some of you are like, “Oh, vegans,” but she doesn’t care.
You can. You can feel any type of way about her. It doesn’t affect her and that makes her vulnerable in that choice. Right?
That’s question number one.
Question number two. Who are you? Who is it you want to work with? What do you believe and who do you want to be surrounded by? Oh, that’s such a good clarifier. When you deeply know who you are, who you want to work with—and when I say who you want to work with, I mean, who you want sitting to your left and to your right? So your peer group, right? Who you want to look up to—your coach, your mentor, your boss, whatever, and then who you want to serve. You know whoever it is you’re doing business with, right?
That’s three different relationships I’m talking about there. What you believe, that goes back to our X factors and our values and who you want to be surrounded by. That should be a massive clarifier in how you should be authentically, professionally, and vulnerably showing up in your business.
Massive clarifier. If what you’re about to do, whether it be a social media post, something you’re going to say, the way you’re going to shift your pricing, if what you’re going to do is not aligned with those things, then you shouldn’t do it. It will not be profitable.
Number three, this is a basic one. Who is your target market? Who is it that you’re looking to make profit with? Not who is it you like to hang out with? Believe me, there’s a lot of people I like to hang out with who would love it if I posted totally different social content and they’d be super entertained and highly engaged, and I wouldn’t make any money at all. Who is it that you’re trying to serve professionally? And what do they want to see?
And then lastly, how do you help that target market? Not how do you entertain them? How do you make them feel warm and fuzzies? How do you help them? Because in thinking about what people turn to you for help with, you have to remember this: the reason I’m talking about the help is because people will choose to invest with those who can resolve their pain, period. Tattoo that on your forehead. People will choose to invest with those who resolve their pain, period.
That is the rule of business, way beyond my coaching. You go to any kind of coaching seminar, webinar summit, anywhere in any type of industry, that is the golden rule. Consumers are wired to pull out their cash to pay for things that resolve their pain. You’re hungry, feed yourself. The pain goes away. Your roof is leaking. You move to a new house. That pain goes away. Your car broke down. Okay. Even if I don’t have the money to buy a new car, I am going to work so hard to earn it or scramble to find money for a bus fare, because I need to get to where I’m going, right? People will do a lot to resolve their pain and you need to be resolving pain if you want to build and grow.
We ask those four filter questions, those clarifiers, to help better understand what the authentic professional vulnerability looks like. Let’s go back to authenticity and what exactly that means, like how do we know if we’re being actually authentic? Remember I shared that Voldemort lost their whole business when they were being professional, profitable, vulnerable, but not authentic? Authentic has to be a part of this. It has to be a part of the formula. It’s just not a choice.
Authenticity is the truth behind your words and actions. What is critical for people to know about you to truly and deeply trust you? Okay. That’s number one.
What do you feel comfortable openly sharing and talking about daily? I think this is important. And the reason I talk about the daily is—this is where I go deep a little bit. I’ve had some pretty massive losses in my life. I actually—here we go. Let’s get vulnerable. I’ve struggled the whole last year in massive fear of the fact that a lot of the people I’ve been closest with in this lifetime are now not here anymore. I’m in my mid thirties and I have lost so much of my support system. They’ve literally passed away. It was crippling for me for a really long time because I was living in this fear of everyone I love the most leaves me. I was telling me this really upsetting story and I struggle with that still to this moment daily.
The reason I bring that up and the reason I say, “What do you feel comfortable openly sharing and talking about daily?”, the reason I’ve not talked about that—like I could have been more vulnerable with y’all and I could have done social media posts about it and stories about it and talked about it until the cows came home and some people would’ve gotten value from that. It would’ve been so painful for me. Even as I share that now—I had to take a pause recording this podcast ‘cause I’m holding back tears. It’s too much. It’s too raw. I don’t feel, even though it’s my truth and it’s authentic, it’s too transparent. It’s uncomfortable, and if the reason I say “talk about it daily,” is if people were DMing me about that, it would open a wound.
And I have talked openly to stylists who were like, “I’m going through a divorce and I am not sure if I want to tell my clients about it, because I don’t want to talk about it.” And I’ve said, “You know what, then maybe that part of your truth you’re not ready to share yet.” It’s okay to be vulnerable and professional and not share every little bit in peace. Because as soon as you start opening up and sharing, like now I’ve opened that door. So now I have to know that somebody—I’ll wait for it—is going to slide into my DMs and say, “Even though you said you don’t want to talk about it, I’m grateful that you brought it up,” and I’ll have a little cry about it and I’ll move on and I’ll be okay, but I’ve now opened that door and you have to be ready to hold the conversation.
I talked about that at the top of this podcast. If you’re going to go there with certain things, you have to be all in on going there, right?
Number three, what is important to you, but doesn’t necessarily support your business? When we talk about authenticity, for me, there is nothing more important in my life than my husband and my kids. They’re just my everything. I would give it all up and live under a bridge with the three of ’em, if that’s what we had to do and I’d be okay. Even though they’re literally the most important thing in my life, I choose not to include them in my business because when I ran them through the above filters, they have nothing to do with who I am, who I want to work with, what I believe in, who my target market is, and how I help my target market sharing stories about my kids. It’s not so much in alignment with what I do now.
I talk about living a wealthy life and putting family first. So could I show pictures of me and my kids in the kitchen baking cookies? Yes, and sometimes I do, but because I want to also be professional and profitable and still authentic, I’ve decided for myself that it’s just not something that supports my business. I’ve dabbled in it and I’ve found that I’ve attracted a lot of mom bloggers who are not my target market clientele. While I love having lots of followers, if they’re not engaging with my content, they’re bringing my algorithm down, so when I think about who I actually want to be engaging with, if profitability is an important part of this conversation, overly sharing my family—like y’all probably have seen this, some influencers who post a picture of their kids when their engagement goes low. And they’re like, “Oh, well just throw a picture of my son up there and then my engagement will blow up.” I didn’t want to be that person and I’m not saying that everybody does that for that reason, so I’m not passing judgment, but I’ve seen the people who do it, and to me it looks scammy. It doesn’t look authentic. Maybe it’s vulnerable, maybe it’s even professional. But to me, like I see right through it and it makes me feel gross.
That’s when I question your authenticity and that’s when you have to start saying, “Does this make sense for my business?” This is where that professionalism comes up.
If you’re struggling with this, as far as what to post and how to show up, I encourage you to stop showing up the way you think will build a following and start showing up in a way that allows you to just stand in your full truth. It’s so much less exhausting. It’s so much easier to build and grow from and you will appear authentic.
Let’s wrap it up by talking about transparency, which is how much you share. Oversharing isn’t vulnerability, it’s over exposure, and overexposure, like we talked about at the beginning of this episode, is very detrimental to brand growth.
So if you’re trying to build business with your social accounts, professional vulnerability really, really matters. Being transparent. But like I’m saying, when I show my kids or when I included my kids at Thrivers Live, having my kids at Thrivers Live is very much personal with a professional twist.
The next probably four or five photos you see of my husband and my kids will be at Thrivers Live because it’s a natural talking point to what I do in this business. If I showed a picture of me and my kids on the couch, sick, could that be my truth? Yes. Would that be authentic? Definitely. Would that be vulnerable? Heck yes. Would that be professional? I don’t know. It’s questionable. Is me on the couch sick going to help build my brand and business? I don’t think so. And so you have to start saying, “What is that overshare? Is it when I go out and take shots with my friends on a Sunday night, because your girl loves tequila.”
I’m not saying that I don’t do those fun things, but what I’m saying is it doesn’t make sense. It’s not the way I want to be vulnerable with. Y’all, it is just not a part of our relationship. If I’m coaching you for your business, I don’t drink 48 hours before I show up to your salon. I will not have a sip of alcohol the entire time. I’m in your place in space, coaching you because I want to be completely clearheaded.
So if you’re considering hiring me for a business coach and you see a picture of me having my Sunday margarita with my girlfriends, you might say, “Cool, she has fun with her friends,” but it might make you question doing business with me. Maybe it wouldn’t. I don’t know.
But for me, my value is I will not only be fully aware and present. When I show up to coach you in your salon or when I come to speak at your event or keynote for you, I will have been gearing up 48 hours in advance to ensure—I change the way I eat. I change the way I sleep. I definitely don’t drink alcohol. I really change myself to prep. It would be inauthentic for me to show up in a way that is not how I show up professionally. Do you see what I’m saying?
And that’s why when I go to an industry event, you won’t see me hanging out at the bar with the other people. That’s not because I judge them. I don’t, but that’s not me. And if you know me, you know it’s just not my personality type. And so I have to really think about who is my truest self? Who is it that I don’t want to be perceived as? A character. I want to be me. And I want to be vulnerable and authentic and professional in a way that still allows me to be profitable in the way that I want this business to be. You see what I’m saying?
We continue to this day to watch several large brands and influencers crumble because they chose to overshare way beyond the bounds of what their followers came to them for. Your followers are coming to you for a reason. They’re trying to learn. They’re trying to grow. They’re trying to build trust. Don’t break it, right? Don’t do that. Overshare transparency, be real, be authentic, share as much as you feel ready to share, but using those filters of “but what is my goal with this account at the end of the day? And it is what I’m sharing in alignment with it?”
I want to share one more quote from Brené who said, why on out true belonging is the spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in both being a part of something and standing alone in the wilderness. True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are. It requires you to be who you are.”
Never change yourself to fit in, never show up in the way that you think you’re supposed to. Don’t just jump on the social media trends because it’s what everybody else is doing. Release the fear of standing alone and embrace the fear of never living your truest, most authentic life.
Y’all, so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
